


Of roses and songs

by MarinaScarlet



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Based on Moulin Rouge, Blood, Drama, Intents of abuse, Multi, Smut, Strong Language, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 17:10:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarinaScarlet/pseuds/MarinaScarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five stories, one town. Two souls who want to change, who want to be better. One romance that will change all. When two people are meant to be together, they’ll find the way. True love always finds the way… Or that only happens in the books? What can do music to improve a town and its habitants? How strong is its power? Is it enough to break the barriers that separate and divide people?<br/>Is it enough… To make everything different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of roses and songs

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I addressed as my “Secret Project”; I started it on Christmas and I finally decided with it. It’s a bit complex (26 characters, 5 storylines that converge in one…) but I’m thrilled to start it. It’ll be a long road, full of music, quotes, images, tears, smiles and above of all, how a single thing can make a difference and change completely everything. I really hope you enjoy the ride. 
> 
> I almost forgot to say that his is slightly based on Moulin Rouge. Just in case.

_Save me, I’m lost_  
 _Oh lord, I’ve been waiting for you_  
 _I’ll pay any cost_  
 _Save me from being confused_

People say that all the big stories happen in big cities, in which you can get easily lost in its streets. In which your voice gets entwined with the crowd.

Because they say that the twin souls can swim among the people, reaching for each other in a frenetic rush that leads to the doors of heaven.

They are wrong.

The biggest stories happen in the smallest places, in which one can get easily lost in its alleys and houses. In which your voice resounds through every single beat of each soul in that place.

Because the twin souls can swim among the emptiness, the wide space, reaching for each other in a frenetic, chaotic and mad rush that leads directly to the doors of heaven.

Or hell.

But what makes special that rush is what you get, what you taste, what you feel, what you acknowledge.  And of course, the end. The sweet ending.

The final resolution, in which you realize that your falls, your mistakes, your tears, everything, has been worthy. Because you’ve got what you’ve ever wanted by your side.

Because all the pain, all the tears, all the suffering is over.

But even when you’ve got what you’ve want by your side, sometimes the bad remains; it haunts you, it eats you up.

And sometimes, it wins.

That’s the price you’ve got to pay for what you want. It’s a risk you’ve got to take.

And what is life if there aren’t any risks?

Nothing.

The risk to search and pursue what you want is the essence of that seeking game, of that mad lap you’ve got to take. Everything tastes better if you add risk, if you add troubles. They are the essence of life.

This is what I’ve been doing my whole life. And this is what I’ll still do.

This is my story, this is how I reached this point. This is how my life began again.

This is a story of pursuing dreams, of making them come true.

This is a story of how things can change, and how the smallest detail can make the biggest change ever.

This is the story of how I learnt to love, of how I learnt to care, of how I learnt to keep.

But it’s also the story of how I learnt to lose.

·········

**_The cracks of my skin can prove, as the years will testify  
Say your prayers and light a fire, we're going to start a war_ **

“ _I will not stand this anymore. I’m sick and tired of the dictatorship and tyranny of the mayor in this town! The revolution has begun!” T_ hey looked at him, with shiny eyes and the brightest smile in their faces. _“Thank you for coming, and thank you for teaching us that even the smallest thing, or even a single man, can make a difference **.** ” _It turned again to the mass of people. _“Tonight everything will change, everything will be different!”_

**_Hey Gloria, this is why we're on the edge  
The fight of our life's been drawn in this undying love_ **

·········

It was said that Storybrooke was a normal town in Maine, with its dinner, its harbor, its town hall, its small streets. A quiet town by the sea.

Nothing far from reality.

In that town, the conspiracies were made when the sun faded out.

The lives of the people changed when the last flicker of sunbeam bathed the clock tower.

Belle’s life was one of the most changing ones, as well Ruby, Emma and Mary Margaret’s. In the morning they were the florist, the waitress, the deputy sheriff and the teacher of the town. But at night they had to get themselves to The Back Door, the place in which the dirtiest businesses of the city were done.

All the girls that were elder than 21 years old had to work at least 3 days a week in that place. It was one of the town’s laws. If anybody broke it, they disappeared without a trace; nobody would know anything about them again. Everybody knew the rules and the consequences. Cora, Maurice and Albert were good at reminding it.

Especially Maurice with her daughter.

If by any chance she arrived a bit late to her night turn in The Back Door, she was seriously punished. If by any chance she dared to challenge her father, she was punished.

If by any chance she protested about the arranged marriage her father had planned with Gaston, she was punished.

Each night, in her pause, or at home, she went to the street, to have a quiet walk under the starry night, and sing her song.

_I follow the night_  
 _Can't stand the light_  
 _**When will I begin  
To live again?**_

Each night, Emma, Mary Margaret and Ruby listened to her musical pledge, wishing the same.  Wishing a change in her lives, wishing the tyranny and the ruling of The Dark Sanctuary would end.

 ** _One day I'll fly away_**  
 **Leave all this to yesterday**    
 _What more could_  
 _Your love do for me?_  
 _When will love be_  
 _Through with me?_

Wishing that an angel would come to save them from such despair.

**_Why live life from_ **  
_Dream to dream_  
 _And dread the day_  
 _when dreaming ends?_

Each night, they went to sleep thinking that everything was part of a bad dream, from a nightmare. And they wished so. But that nightmare was real.

**_One day I'll fly away_ **  
_**Leave all this to yesterday** _  
_Why live life from_  
 _Dream to dream_  
 _And dread the day_  
 _When dreaming ends?_

Their tears soaked their hopes and dreams each time they closed their eyes and Morpheus embraced them. In dreams, they were safe. In dreams, they entered the lives they wanted. And they wished never wake up. But dreams have to come to an end. And when they opened their eyes in the morning, the reality attacked them again, and the darkness ate them up again, as each day.

And with the sunlight, their hopes and dream went to bed, to rest until the night fell again, and those damaged ladies, with their chipped shields and broken swords, went one more day to fight against the monsters that haunted their lives.

Each day they wished to fly away.

 **_One day I'll fly away_ ** _  
Fly, fly away_

 

Despite her hard life and suffering, Isabelle French always tried to smile the brightest and to face her problems in an optimistic way, because there was something that no one could ever take away from her: her smile.

 **_She puts her makeup_ ** _on like graffiti on the walls of the heartland_  
 _**She's got her little book of conspiracies right in her hand** _  
_She is paranoid like endangered species headed into extinction_  
 _**She is one of a kind, well, she's the last of the American girls**_

Everybody in town knew Belle’s vitality and happiness; her books were her way out of her particular nightmare, and somehow, she was managing to escape from her father and fiancé’s control. But she was also a complete disaster, always with her nose stick in her books and with an alarming lack of concentration.

_Like a hurricane in the heart of the devastation  
 **She's a natural disaster, she's the last of the American girls**_

That was her mask, her shield to fight against the life she had to live. That was her true shield.

·········

“ _But let me explain you…”_

“ _Explain what, Sarah? You lied to me, you cheated on me, and now you want me to forget that and act as if nothing of this happened?_ ” He sat down on the chair and put his right hand on his face. “ _Go out._ ”

“ _But Matt, please!_ ”

“ _Didn’t you hear me? Go the fuck out of here now._ ” He swallowed hard, fighting back the tears. “ _I never want to see you again._ ”

She opened her mouth to say something but she knew that her best option in that moment was shouting up and get out of that flat. When she closed the door, he rose from the chair and with his bare hands, started to break everything that was around him.

He didn’t care if the pieces of glass were nailed in his skin.

He didn’t care if he had broken a finger.

He didn’t care about anything anymore.

_Do you know what's worth fighting for?_  
 _When it's not worth dying for?_  
 _Does it take your breath away_  
 _And you feel yourself suffocating?_

When his appetite for destruction calmed down, he sat on the floor, and started to cry. The person for whom he had gave up some of his dreams, the person he had given everything to, the person who owed every single piece of his soul, had betrayed him.

_Does the pain weigh out the pride?  
And you look for a place to hide?_

He knew Sarah had a few issues, but he believe they weren’t irrelevant, or at least, he didn’t care much about them. But that certainly was a huge mistake.

His friends had told him that she was a cheater, and if you caught her, she would beg for your apologies, and she will insist that she wouldn’t do that again.

That happened that summer evening in Matthew Gold’s flat.

_Did someone break your heart inside?  
You're in ruins_

He didn’t remember how much time he had spent crying, but it had been enough to calm himself and to put his thoughts in order.

He thought it was time to get back the lost time, to catch his dreams, to do what he ever wanted to do. It was time to do everything he had always wanted to do. He was going to put himself together, to pick up the pieces and be whole again.

That evening he decided he would take his guitar and his typewriter, his mind and all the ideas he had been putting down in paper during the years he had spent with Sarah, and move to somewhere far from the noise of Los Angeles at least for a whole year. He was free at last. And although his heart still hurts, he was starting to feel better than ever.

Not all the breakups were bad. That one had been liberation.

**_I promise you that  
We're marchin’ on_ **

The city chosen for his escape was Storybrooke. It was said that town was one of the most peaceful and inspiring to write; a few modern writers have gone there and sometime after they’ve left the town, they had published some of their best works.

“ _If they had done it, I can do it too._ ”

And a week after the breakup, he was on his way to Storybrooke.

He arrived in his old Cadillac after a titanic trip across all the country; Storybrooke was on the East Coast, in Maine. Surrounded by the sea and a huge forest, Matt felt like things were about to change there. It was his reboot.

The two first things that he remember to feel when he put his right feet on the asphalt of Storybrooke’s streets were the sea breeze and a pair of blue eyes hidden under a huge brunette hair mass that stumbled upon him.

Both fell to the ground, and the girl landed over Matt’s body.

“ _Are you okay?_ ”

“ _I’m so sorry, I was reading and I know somebody shouldn’t be reading as she’s walking on the street and…_ ” She was very nervous.

“ _Shhh, don’t worry._ ” He smiled. “ _I’ll try to ask it to you again; are you okay?_ ”

“ _Yes, yes. And you?_ ”

“ _Me too. My name’s Matthew Gold._ ” He said as he rose from the ground and helped the girl to do the same, picking her book too and handing it to her.

“ _I’m Isabelle French; a pleasure to meet you._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Songs featured in this chapter:
> 
> · Show me what I'm looking for - Carolina Liar  
> · ¡Viva la gloria! - Green Day  
> · One day I'll fly away - Moulin Rouge  
> · Last of the American Girls - Green Day  
> · 21 guns - Green Day  
> · Marchin' on - OneRepublic


End file.
